So Now What?

So, now what am I doing now that I have finished the book? And what’s the next step? What’s the plan? When can people read it? When will it be in a store like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.? Can it be downloaded on a Kindle?

Not for a while, sorry to say.

The next step in all of this is to ultimately get it published, and preferably get it published with one of the Big Five, or one of their main imprints. In order for that to happen, you need a good agent to solicit it there for you — because, these places will not read your manuscript otherwise. It’s highly unlikely. In fact, it’s also unlikely they will accept it from an agent at the length it is! It’s about 30,000 words too long.

If the agent thing doesn’t work out — and I’m not sure how long I’ll give that, especially because I have concerns on the timeliness of releasing it. It does take about a year to publish once it’s accepted and I don’t want the relevance of this being a good time to release it to go to waste. That’s not to say the subject matter would ever go stale. It’s just that now is the perfect time. Current events and all.

So, I don’t see waiting too long if I can’t get an agent. I may find myself shopping it to smaller imprints of bigger presses myself — ones that will take unsolicited submissions, that is. Then, I’ll work my way down from there.

If all else fails, I’ll have to find a boutique press, self publish it, or something of that nature. Or both actually.

Right now, there are a small handful of people I have chosen as “beta” readers so I can get a bit of feedback on certain aspects of the book. I’m looking for a couple more. It’s not a “quick” read, and you’d have to swear yourself to secrecy for possibly over a year. I guess, I’d have to know you and trust you pretty well too.

Oh, and by the way, writing a query letter is hard! I’ve been drafting them for the last couple weeks. Not an easy task.